Maybe Summer has finally come

Let me start with church, last one was written just afters Sarah’s leaving service, there was six inches of snow on the ground and yet maybe 200 people turned up to bid her farewell. Now I let the cat out of the bag, that was not her last service. Her actual last service was a week later and was Easter Communion. I was table elder 1, which means I was in Anglican speak master of ceremonies. That is I have to make sure we have everything we need and that everyone knows what they are doing and is happy doing it. Saturday set up was very quick indeed particularly as we were in, in the morning and the polishers were not in until the afternoon. That however did mean that we needed to be early to setup on the Sunday.  For some reason wine decided it was not going to behave. The open bottle of non-alcoholic was off, I then managed to pour an extra tray of it (had to be chucked) and finally the chalice got over filled, and a wine glass got dropped. I was just glad we were as low a tradition as we were. Having to wash the large linen table cloth in cold water and then dispose of water reverentially is beyond the lengths that I am ready to go to. There was of course the formal farewells to Sarah after communion with things being presented.  One incident to recall, St Andrews had decided to give Sarah a bread knife as a reminder of her time in Sheffield. However Sheila who was doing the presentation was not prepared to give it to Sarah unless Sarah gave her something in return so that the knife would not cut through the relationship. Only thing is that Sarah like most ministers in clerical gear did not have anything on her. so I ended up lending her 10p! I then had to send the 10p up to the collection as Sheila started wondering what to do with it!

The Sunday after was quieter, it was low Sunday and Sarah had left the previous week. There was still a good turnout and I was able to get a decent number of people for a greetings video to be sent to Southampton for Sarah’s induction. It was as if only once she had gone that people were ready to do that. There being only one week between that meant I suspect a number of people who would have liked to did not get to make a recording because they were away that week. Organising it was very simple really, there were obvious opening and closing shots and then I tried to arrange things so that things were well mixed up between, so mix of greeting lengths, persons and styles. I also only had to edit one video more than cutting off my prompt at the start, and that was for a double reasons: it was too long and it was too personal. Anyway thanks to NCH Videopad  I was able to combine them that afternoon and send them off to various people I knew were involved in the arranging of the induction.

The following Sunday was the date Sarah was inducted to her new charge at Southampton. It was also the first thesis weekend I got in five weeks so I missed out both on going to Southampton and on the video locally. However as the Video link was to the Jesus Centre just across the road from my flat when I looked out at 3:30 pm the carpark opposite was full! Today I heard that they had around twenty to see. The link was not as good as it could have been.

Today it was quiet, with a small congregation. We will see what the weeks ahead bring. At present our Management Team have lots of enthusiasm, in some ways I am happy for them to have their head as long as they do not expect me at present to do anything really substantial. We will see what the weeks ahead bring.

The next thing I will turn to is work. This has been busy, even more so than usual as I  have been teaching a course on Statistics. I do not usually even claim to teach statistics.I advise but I leave the teaching to others. It also involves me in learning a new statistics package. Now that is something I do do, but this time the package is R. I know on the surface I should get on with it. I do like programmy packages and there is part of me that still hankers for the interface of GLIM. Heck I was so fluent in Glim that I basically did monte-carlo tests in it at one stage. That is so far out on the left hand side that most people just would not think to do it. Then give me Genstat and I will manage to get it to dance actually I can get SPSS to but that is due to familiarity. R as I said should suit me. However the more I investigate the more cautious I am coming. The pressures on Open Source packages have sometimes led to them implementing non- open source options.  Anyway the first session I was just not communicating and was trying to think why. The second session I got a lot further with.

I am also starting to work out how I will work with the chaplaincy at the University. There is a difference between before Sarah and now both in the structure of the chaplaincy and also in how I am appointed. I am not keeping a seat warm for someone else this time. There is no sign that there will be someone else, so it is in part up to me to try and sort out how things happen. Otherwise I have at least one paper where I need to sit down and sort out what happened. Hopefully I will get chance to do that in the second half of this week after I have done the third session of the teaching.

Then there is thesis. I am working at the rate I expected but there is more redrafting than ideally I would like. My supervisor was slightly surprised with the time I quoted between going from draft unproof-read to full proofread  draft but then I gave him what I was basing my estimate on. He then realised that simply because I am so much more used to getting my pieces proof-read thank you James and Ruth, that I may actually have a time advantage. This reminds me that at some stage I have got to look up the details of how the files need presenting for submission. I have quite deliberately also not done much styling within Word, as I know that when I come to do the final submission I will need to style according to the way the University of Birmingham wants it. Now this is where my computer literacy comes in. I am used to applying styles to the whole document and therefore I tend to first write the document and only bother about layout at the end. Anyway I now have a possible names for my examiners. I think I am going to see if I can celebrate my Birthday by submitting on it.